Slice of Life: Incubus
by The Black Sluggard
Summary: A study in mutually assured destruction. Life AU. Zombies. Slash, Ryan/Esposito. Warnings for blood and gore.


The footsteps ahead were beginning to falter, desperation and raggedness of breath finally driving his target to seek refuge, but Javier was right on his heels. He was close enough to see when Lockwood dove into the shadows of the narrow alley off to their right...

And _more_ than close enough to hear him swear when the man realized it was a dead end.

Lockwood had turned to face him by the time Javier caught up at the mouth of the alley and was in the process of drawing his gun. Unfortunately—for _him_—Javier wasn't winded by their long chase, and his pace never slowed as rapid strides quickly ate up the distance between them. A stiff sweep of his arm knocked the weapon aside as his momentum carried them both over. Brick shattered as the bullet missed, hitting the wall behind him. Which, again, was just too goddamned bad for Lockwood...

A head shot was the only chance he'd ever had of leaving that alley alive.

There was a spirited struggle as they hit the ground and Lockwood tried to maneuver his gun back into position. That plan was quickly ended as Javier grabbed his hand and dragged it close—_perilously_ close to the only target that mattered—and sank his teeth into the flesh of the man's wrist. He felt bone shift as he tightened his jaw, heard Lockwood's cry of pain, and when Javier finally released a sharp twist of the arm was all it took to shake the gun from his hand. A bead of blood fell from his lips as they drew back from his teeth, rolling down his chin. The taste was so hot, so _bright_ on his tongue...

And when his teeth tore into the flesh of Lockwood's forearm it was only because that limb was in his way, thrown up desperately in self-defense to block Javier's attempt at his throat.

Lockwood was making these short, breathless sounds as he fought. For all his focus was locked on other things, Javier was aware when all that coolness and planning started to evaporate, replaced by terror as Lockwood began to fully comprehend his situation. Replaced by blinding, primitive _panic_ once he realized that he no longer faced a vengeful officer of the law, but an angry, implacable animal single-minded in its hunger for his destruction.

Though he didn't suffer that terror for very long.

Lockwood's final scream came to an end with a sick gurgle as Javier scored the kill-bite, teeth sinking in deep, _deeper_, until the blood sprayed hot from the torn artery to paint his chin and chest. Javier lifted his head, tearing free with a mouthful of gristle and warm meat. Lockwood managed to wrestle his last few convulsive breaths before his windpipe was flooded, his final, futile efforts taking the form of a choking noise and a cough that flecked his shock-paled face and left his teeth stained pink. Javier spared just a moment to watch the light dull in the man's eyes as the blood spilled out of him, to watch the power behind each pump of that lovely red diminish until all that remained was a slow, disappointing trickle.

Satisfied that his victim's fight was ended, Javier swallowed the tough meat in his mouth before he turned his full attention to softer flesh...

Blood made the fabric slippery in his hands, and the wetness lent it strength, but it took only a few hard tugs to rip open the front of the shirt, exposing the chest and belly. Skin and fat gave way easily under the effort of his jaws and fingers, but it took a great deal of tearing to breach the thick wall of abdominal muscle. All that effort was worth it, however, once he reached the slick, dense mass of the liver. Dragged free of the ribcage, it glistened wetly in the dim light and the rich, rusty tissue was still hot when he bit in.

It was a hand on his shoulder that finally drew Javier away from the red lust for flesh and he spun around quickly at the interruption. Cold fingers wet with warm blood closed around the intruder's throat as Javier forced him against the wall, already leaning in with low-pitched rasp before recognition hit him. The remaining shards of his shattered control brought his jaws shut less than an inch away from disaster—from _Kevin_, whose face was flushed and breathing labored from his efforts to catch up.

Kevin, whose blue eyes were wide but stared back at him with a spark of something that was in its own way fierce and hungry, untouched by fear or disgust.

Javier closed the remaining distance between them, pressing his partner back against the cold brick with an entirely different goal in mind. The heat of Kevin's mouth was so much sweeter filled with the taste of liquid iron, the kiss painting his lips and chin a vibrant red. Javier pulled back, running his tongue over the dark smear at the corner of Kevin's mouth before pressing his teeth into the delicate flesh along the edge of his partner's jaw. Kevin made a small noise—half a gasp, only lower—tilting his head to expose the pale vulnerability of his throat.

It was tempting. It was _so_ tempting...

With a low growl, Javier's teeth scraped harshly over the delicate flesh, tongue trailing after to taste the heat of his partner's skin as the blood rushed to fill the bruise beneath its surface. His hands fell to the front of Kevin's slacks, popping the button with a tug that threatened to tear the zipper free of the seam. Kevin's intervention was needed to navigate those complexities where it was truly necessary, to steer relentless, searching fingers as they left their mark in drying blood, tacky against the warm skin beneath his touch.

Hate, urgency and hunger having stripped him of all reason, all sense of self, what was left behind thought nothing of taking Kevin right there, down amidst the filth of the alley and the still warm remains of its kill...

-

When Javier awoke it was to a familiar, excited numbness prickling in his limbs.

He was standing in the bathroom, leaning against the counter to steady his weight on knees that were distressingly loose. He was dressed for bed, still holding his toothbrush like an idiot. A quick glance at his watch showed that it was past 1 am, meaning he'd probably been standing there for more than half an hour. Under normal circumstances, just knowing he'd let his mind overtake his body yet again would have been embarrassing enough. As the numbness slowly faded, however, sensation returned inch by inch, and shame stung his throat as he became aware of the cool dampness where his pant-leg clung to the inside of his thigh.

It was fifteen minutes later when he finally slid into bed, slightly warmer from the water he'd used to clean up and bitterly thankful when Kevin did not wake. At that moment he was as close to tired as he ever felt anymore, but Javier didn't think he would sleep. Not after that. Hoping to settle his mind he lay on his side, watching his partner's sleeping face as he attempted to dissect his own emotions, confusing as always in the wake of his dream.

It had been a long time since Kevin had featured in any of Javier's most violent dreams—not since the worst parts of onset, as far as he could remember. While Kevin had featured in plenty of _other_ dreams since, however far the exact details might have veered from the safely normal, this was the first time Javier had ever had a dream that managed to so ruthlessly combine the two. He tried to scrape together what he was feeling into something resembling comprehensible, but it was difficult to approach those things—the euphoria of the dream, the savage arousal—with anything but a sense of horror and disgust.

And fear. Always fear.

The fear inspired by his wrong dreams was normally directed inward. Fear of regression—of being reduced once more to the vicious, empty _thing _he had been during onset, worse than an animal. Worse sometimes, fear of himself, of what _he_ might be capable of if he ever just gave up—gave _in_ to what darker parts of him thought they wanted, letting himself cross a line that allowed no turning back...

Tonight, the fear he felt was subtly different from what he was used to, but at least he had a fairly strong idea of what had prompted it.

Hal Lockwood had tried to escape during his arraignment two days ago, an attempt that had come perilously close to succeeding. Even now, thinking about it inspired a wave of fury so intense his jaws practically creaked with the effort to contain it. Closing his eyes briefly, Javier had to remind himself that the man who had tortured Kevin while he was forced to watch was still safely behind bars.

Though, in his head, exactly who was safe from whom was still a little cloudy...

News of the attempt had dragged back memories of that first encounter that Javier would have thought for sure had been put behind him. The helplessness, fear and rage that he'd felt that night had returned, suddenly and unexpected, as fresh as when they were new. But so many things had changed since that first time he'd felt them, both in himself and in his relationship with his partner, and his reaction saw itself changing with them. Those feelings had seemed so much fiercer than before, more immediate and far less sane. For just a moment, Javier thought that if the man responsible had been in front of him, few things short of death could have stopped him from tasting Lockwood's blood.

Javier's rigid control of himself took a greater toll on him some days than it did others, but before it had always seemed strong enough that he wasn't an immediate danger to anyone. On his worst days, at his most stressed, at his most _unstable_, he would have thought even human garbage like Lockwood had little to fear from him. This experience had caught him terrifyingly off-guard. Now he was much less certain.

If there was one thing Javier had been aware of even before he'd understood what his feelings for the other man really meant, it was how important a part of his life his partner had become. That, at some point between the start of his illness and that first kiss, Kevin had become as necessary to his existence as breathing once had been. This latest incident with Lockwood had given him a taste of just how dangerous that might be. And Lockwood might have been packed away neatly, for now, but that didn't mean that Kevin was safe. There was a whole ugly world out there, waiting to drag him away...

Javier knew his control would never be strong enough that losing Kevin like that wouldn't break him—and break him so completely there would be nothing left to put back together.

This, however, was not a revelation, and it wasn't the part of his dream that had left him so shaken.

His partner slept very well at night for a man fully aware of what he was falling asleep next to, and Javier knew there was more behind Kevin's peace than just patience and understanding and trust. Those were there—those were there in _abundance—_but there were other elements of his relationship with Kevin of which he was aware, ones that he had always been hesitant to look at too closely. Kevin loved him—_had_ loved him, apparently, for longer than Kevin had deserved to wait and for far longer than Javier felt he could ever have deserved. That had been a hard enough fact for him to accept. That Kevin loved him _still_, however, had been even more difficult to fathom before a single, important realization had finally make that possible.

Kevin had loved him before he got sick, back when there had been little chance of it ever being returned. Kevin had loved him enough to abandon the future he'd had all planned out with Jenny when his own future had been uncertain. And, for the longest time after they finally came together, Javier had thought that Kevin loved him in spite of all the things that had gone so horrifically wrong inside of him.

He'd thought that, but he was wrong.

Because Kevin _didn't_ love just the rational, sane man he went to work with every day, the cop, the loving son, the friend. If he had, he wouldn't be loving the truth. Those faces of himself weren't a lie, but on their own they weren't an accurate representation of the whole. Not any more.

Kevin apparently needed that...

Somehow, Kevin loved all that he was, even that uncontrolled, hungry piece of himself he tried so desperately to hide. _That_ was what Javier just couldn't understand, and what had frightened him the most about his dream. Because one thing he _had_ finally begun to understand was that the danger went both ways in their relationship. Now that he'd seen it, he couldn't help but wonder whether Kevin was any better equipped to live without _him_. Whether, if he ever regressed to that point in reality—if he was ever so _gone_ that he could kill—Kevin might bare his throat to Javier's hunger willingly.

It was one of those thoughts that couldn't be unthought, and the implications of it scared him more than any nightmare he had ever had. When he wrapped his arms around his partner, Javier didn't think he'd ever needed to feel Kevin's warmth so desperately. And he still had the rest of a long night ahead of him...

More than certain he would find no sleep tonight, Javier was less than certain whether he'd ever sleep again.


End file.
